U.N. Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Special
Rapporteur on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1994/31 (1994)(Nigel Rodley, Special
Rapporteur).

Malawi

Information transmitted to the Government

370. By letter dated 9 June 1993 the Special Rapporteur informed
the Government of reports he had received about arrests and short-term
imprisonment of supporters of the movement for a multi-party system
that allegedly occurred in 1992. The conditions of imprisonment
of those arrested were reported to be exceptionally poor. The
main prisons to which they were taken, Chichiri in Blantyre and
Maula in Lilongwe, were reportedly those with the worst conditions
and the most severe overcrowding in the country. Prisoners were
forced to spend the night standing crammed together because there
was not even space for them to sit. Many of those arrested were
alleged to have been subjected to severe beatings, electric shocks
and sexual abuse.

371. It was also reported that assault and torture were crimes
under Malawi's Penal Code and unlawful under Malawi's civil law,
entitling the victim to sue for damages. However, no prosecution
or civil action for assault or torture was known to have taken
place. The following individual cases were reported:

(a) Sophia Nkosana was arrested on about 17 April 1992 and
held for about five days before being released without charge.
While she was in custody at police headquarters in Lilongwe she
was reported to have been stripped naked, beaten, poked with
a cattle prod and placed in a cell smeared with excrement.

(b) Samuel Mkandawire and Kenneth Govati, student union officials,
were arrested in Blantyre on 17 March 1992. They were among a
group of approximately 75 students arrested by the police at
the polytechnic in response to a demonstration and taken to Chichiri
prison and Chilomoni and Ndirande police posts, where they were
beaten. Samuel Mkandawire and Kenneth Govati were also alleged
to have been tortured by having their genitals squeezed.

(c) Chakufwa Chihana, Secretary General of the Southern African
Trades Union Coordination Council (SATUCC), was arrested on 6
April 1992 and taken to Mikuyu prison, a maximum security prison
in Zomba. He was put in an extremely small cell, only the size
of his body, where the window had been deliberately blocked off.
The first night the warders put a wild cat in the cell and, for
almost one month, he was held in leg irons.